The leap into monkhood

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The leap into monkhood

Sunday, 11 July 2021 | Excerpt

The leap into monkhood

Name - WOMEN WHO WEAR ONLY THEMSELVES

Author - Arundhathi Subramaniam

Publisher - Speaking Tiger, Rs 499

In Women Who Wear Only Themselves, poet and seeker Arundhathi Subramaniam gives us a glimpse into the lives of four self-contained, unapologetic female spiritual travellers. An edited excerpt:

Maa Karpoori

Maa is a sanyasi. She is also a friend. When I reflect on the fact that my inner circle of friends includes two monks, it gives me pause. It is no coincidence, I’ve decided. There is something here that I have to acknowledge: I am fascinated, on some level, by monkhood.

Back in college, I had a Jesuit mentor and friend who told me he might easily have joined the Communist Party at the age of nineteen if he hadn’t discovered the Society of Jesus first. Nineteen myself, I thought I understood his life choice. As I watched him work furiously on his monographs in his shabby office with wooden ceilings and temperamental kettle, or vanish for days of fieldwork in the Maharashtrian hinterland, I could see the temptation of the renunciate’s life.

I relate to the idea (even if I don’t feel called to live it) of paring away inessential identities, of giving up the seductive daily jugglery of roles — employee, offspring, spouse, parent — that we are encouraged to believe is the excitement of human life. Outsourcing one’s material anxieties to a monastic order to lead a life of social engagement or contemplation also makes sense to me. Simplifying life makes deeper sense still.

At the same time, the Jesuit vow of obedience was a daunting one. I found it more intimidating, I told Rudi, than even the vows of chastity or poverty. With my mistrust of authority, I never quite understood how one could entrust one’s freedom to anyone — least of all, to an institutional authority. Yes, I was aware of how ‘freedom’ as a catchword had been mangled to justify, and even valorize, the unconscious life. I knew I was probably guilty of it. And yet, my issues with obedience lingered.

I have learnt over time, however, that the lives of householder and monk aren’t as polarized as they seem. If you are committed to self-understanding, both lives entail a mix of freedom and discipline. It’s a bit like asking a poet which is superior-metre or free verse. Freedom and form are vital to both, so how do you answer that one? In a good poem, free verse isn’t self-indulgence, and metre isn’t a straitjacket. In a bad poem, they are. The monk as metrician, and the committed seeker as free verse practitioner-those images help me navigate the simple-minded comparisons that often arise on the spiritual path.

Fifteen years ago, in the course of a conversation with a sanyasi from the ashram that I have considered to be my sanctuary for several years, I casually observed, ‘Monkhood, I imagine, is like a particularly demanding marriage: finding a way to be committed not to one single individual, but to an entire sangha.’

Maa happened to be a silent bystander to that conversation. We barely knew each other at the time. But she says that she filed away that comment. It was evidently proof for her that I wasn’t just a nosy journalist, an ethnographer foraging for case studies. ‘I thought to myself then: okay, she sees more than I thought,’ she says.

Since then, Maa has swept into my life and settled down in it — decisively, as is her manner. She is a significant reference point for me, not to mention, an endless source of fellowship and mirth. Talkative and given to theatrical pronouncements, she can be entertaining company. And yet, there is much more to her than that. In the middle of a torrent of anecdote and opinion, she offers liberal doses of insight that, I often suspect, startle her as well. She is a whirlwind: cheerful, opinionated, large-hearted, bristling with dynamism and her own brand of sensitivity.

Maa has been able to propel me into situations I would customarily have run a mile from. She has got me to agree to a three-day ash-gourd-juice diet, to plunge into a chilly temple tank thrice in a single morning, and even to stand on a wobbly ladder to perform a vertiginous snake ritual. I obey because I have learnt over the years that it is futile to resist. Maa is a force of nature. To argue with her is like trying to reason with a particularly determined tornado. Or like debating free will with a wildly rampaging earthquake.

She once related a story that gave me an insight into her defining mix of temerity and humour. In the early days of monkhood, she visited the home of her sister, a doctor. The medical check-up took time, and her sister suggested she stay over. The two sisters had dinner and stayed up late, chatting. They turned in at midnight. It was around one in the morning when eight or nine men entered Maa’s room. They were copybook burglars, Maa recalls, with knives, blazing eyes, their breaths heavy with paan masala. They surrounded her bed. ‘I was terrified,’ says Maa. ‘But from somewhere inside me, a voice spoke up.’ She pauses for effect. ‘I heard myself telling them loudly and sternly, “Don’t you dare touch me!”’

The burglars were taken aback. I imagine them hesitating, moustaches aquiver with uncertainty. Maa pressed her advantage. ‘Can’t you see I’m a monk? Don’t you lay a finger on me.’

The men conferred briefly with each other. If they had any baser motives in mind, they decided to quell them. Nonetheless, they gagged Maa, bound her arms and legs, and left her on her bed. They then went about their business. ‘I could hear them moving around the house. I stayed still, watching my breath. There was not much else I could do.’ Two hours later, Maa managed to free herself. She went in quest of her sister. The burglars had evidently given up when they found that there was little to burgle in her recently occupied home. ‘My sister and her husband were in their bedroom, shaken. When I told them what I’d said to the burglars, they couldn’t believe it. My sister kept saying: How could you be so bold?’ Maa chuckles triumphantly at the memory.

Excerpted with permission from Women Who Wear Only Themselves: Conversations with Four Travellers on Sacred Journeys by Arundhathi Subramaniam. Published by Speaking Tiger

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